Oracle Cloud Always Free: What Is Included and Where the Limits Are
What Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier includes, how it differs from the 30-day trial, and the home region, capacity and idle limits to plan around.
Oracle Cloud Always Free is one of the more generous no-cost cloud offers: it includes virtual machines, block storage, object storage, Autonomous Databases and a load balancer that do not expire after a trial. It also has rules that catch people out, from home region restrictions to idle instance reclamation. This guide explains what is included in Oracle Cloud Always Free, how it relates to the free trial, and where the limits are.
Free trial and Always Free are two different things #
When you sign up for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), you get two offers at once:
- The Free Trial: a one-time amount of credit (at the time of writing, US$300 or local equivalent) valid for 30 days, usable on most OCI services.
- Always Free resources: a fixed set of services with capacity limits that you can use for as long as the account exists, during and after the trial.
When the trial ends or the credit runs out, resources created with credit (anything outside the Always Free limits) are stopped and eventually reclaimed unless you upgrade the account to Pay As You Go. Always Free resources keep running. Confirm the current offer on Oracle’s official free tier page, because amounts and durations can change. For context on the provider itself, see our Oracle Cloud platform overview.
What is included #
The table below summarizes the main Always Free allowances as documented at the time of writing. Oracle adjusts these from time to time, so treat the official documentation as the source of truth.
| Service | Always Free allowance | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AMD compute | Up to 2 VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instances | Each has 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB memory; fine for tiny services |
| Arm (Ampere A1) compute | 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month | Equivalent to 4 OCPUs and 24 GB memory running continuously, split across up to 4 instances |
| Block Volume | 200 GB total, plus a small number of volume backups | Boot volumes count toward the 200 GB |
| Object Storage | 20 GB combined across storage tiers | API request allowance applies |
| Autonomous Database | 2 databases | Each with limited OCPU and storage; transaction processing, data warehouse or JSON workloads |
| Load Balancer | 1 flexible load balancer and 1 network load balancer | Flexible load balancer bandwidth is capped at a low rate |
| Outbound data transfer | 10 TB per month | A large allowance compared with most free tiers |
| Networking | Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs), with limits | Includes subnets, security lists and gateways |
Beyond these, Always Free also covers smaller allowances for services such as NoSQL Database tables, Monitoring, Notifications, Logging, Vault secrets and Certificates. Several of those are useful for building a complete small project without paying.
What the Arm allowance can realistically run
The Ampere A1 allowance is the headline feature. Four Arm cores and 24 GB of RAM is enough for a small Kubernetes cluster (k3s is popular), a self-hosted Git service, a database for a side project, or a handful of containers behind a reverse proxy. You can use it as one large instance or split it into smaller ones.
Keep in mind that software must support the arm64 (aarch64) architecture. Most Linux distributions, languages and popular container images do, but check any closed-source dependencies before you plan around it.
Where the limits are #
1. Home region only
You choose a home region at sign-up, and it cannot be changed later. Always Free compute resources can only be created in the home region. Pick the region closest to your users, and be aware that popular regions sometimes have limited capacity.
2. Capacity for Arm instances
Ampere A1 instances in the free tier are subject to available capacity. In busy regions, creating one can fail with an “out of capacity” error. Retrying later, trying a different availability domain within the region, or choosing a smaller shape are the normal responses. Upgrading to Pay As You Go does not change the Always Free allowance, but paid accounts are generally treated with higher priority for capacity.
3. Idle instance reclamation
Oracle may reclaim Always Free compute instances that are idle. Per Oracle’s documentation at the time of writing, an instance can be considered idle if, over a seven-day period, its CPU utilization, network utilization and (for A1 shapes) memory utilization all stay below low thresholds. The practical lesson: Always Free instances are for running real workloads, not for parking unused servers. Keep backups of anything important in Object Storage or off the platform.
4. Service limits and quotas
Every OCI tenancy has service limits. On a free account some are low by design. If you need more than the Always Free allowance, the correct path is to upgrade to Pay As You Go and, where necessary, request a service limit increase through the OCI Console. These limits exist to prevent abuse and runaway costs, and they are managed through that official process.
5. No SLA
Always Free resources are not covered by the same service level commitments as paid resources, and support for free accounts is limited mainly to documentation and community forums. Do not run anything business-critical on Always Free alone.
Upgrading to Pay As You Go without surprise bills #
Many people upgrade to avoid trial-expiry cleanup or to get better capacity. Upgrading keeps your Always Free allowances; you only pay for usage above them. To keep that true in practice:
- Create a budget in the Billing and Cost Management section with an alert at a small amount, so any paid usage is flagged within days.
- Look for the “Always Free-eligible” label when creating resources. If a shape or service lacks it, it will be billed.
- Watch block storage. Extra volumes, larger boot volumes and extra backups beyond the free allowance are billed.
- Review cost reports weekly for the first month, until you are confident nothing unexpected is running.
Our guide to cloud cost management with budgets and tagging goes deeper on alerting patterns that work across providers.
Setting up a first Always Free server sensibly #
- Create a VCN with the wizard, which sets up a public subnet, internet gateway and route table.
- Launch an instance with an Always Free-eligible shape, and upload your own SSH public key.
- Open only the ports you need in the subnet’s security list or a network security group. OCI blocks inbound traffic by default apart from SSH in the default rules.
- Remember that Oracle’s Linux and Ubuntu images also run a host firewall. Opening a port in the security list is not enough if
iptablesorfirewalldon the instance still blocks it. - Enable MFA on your OCI user and avoid using the tenancy administrator for daily work. Our cloud account security checklist covers the rest of the basics.
Official references #
The OCI documentation includes a dedicated page listing all Always Free resources and their current limits, and Oracle’s free tier page describes the trial and Always Free offers. Check both before planning a project around specific numbers.
Oracle Cloud Always Free: frequently asked questions #
Do Always Free resources stop when the free trial ends?
No. Always Free resources continue after the 30-day trial. Only resources that were paid for with trial credit, and are outside the Always Free limits, are stopped and later reclaimed unless you upgrade to Pay As You Go.
Why do I get an “out of capacity” error for Ampere A1 instances?
Free Arm capacity is limited in some regions. Retry later, try another availability domain in your home region, or use a smaller shape. You cannot move Always Free compute to a different region than your home region.
Will Oracle delete my idle Always Free instance?
Oracle can reclaim Always Free compute instances that stay idle, with very low CPU, network and memory use, over a seven-day period. Keep workloads active and maintain backups of important data.
Can I lose the Always Free allowance by upgrading?
No. Upgrading to Pay As You Go keeps your Always Free allowances. You are billed only for resources and usage beyond those limits, so set a budget alert right after upgrading.
